Diyar Guldogan
30 April 2024•Update: 30 April 2024
WASHINGTON
San Francisco State University started an encampment Monday to protest Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
Students set up tents on the quad to show support for Palestine and carried banners saying "Students 4 Palestine," "Our Tax $ Kill Children of Gaza" and "Free Palestine."
The protest comes as demonstrations continue at Stanford and UC Berkeley.
Protests are sweeping college campuses nationwide following an attempt by police to clear a pro-Palestine encampment at New York's Columbia University, resulting in the arrest of over 100 students.
Hundreds of students have been arrested on campuses across the US, with protests demanding universities divest from Israel and condemn its ongoing war on the besieged Gaza Strip, where over 34,400 people have been killed.
Students in several other countries including Canada, Australia, France and Egypt have organized demonstrations at their universities in solidarity with Palestine.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed nearly 1,200 people.
Nearly 34,500 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 77,600 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
